With the price of printing equipment and CD duplication coming down over the last few years it has become more budget friendly for small businesses. In few thousand dollars you can acquire semi-professional printing machines and CD duplication.
However if, the need is solely for small runs of 10s or 100s then this is sufficient. Print quality for these inkjet dependent systems is usually appropriate, although it doesn’t go up to the professional criteria of electronically printed or screen printed CDs.
So what happens though when you need one thousand CDs by the next day for an immediate mail out? Or your customer needs a specific match of their business brand colors (not something usually achievable using inkjet print). In these cases, it is time to outsource it to a professional duplication business. At higher quantities the price is probably on par with working the task in-house, because of the economies of scale that larger sized duplication businesses gain from.
You will also gain from enhanced lead times (majority of businesses offers one to two day turnaround) and much greater quality prints. In order to make the task easy and right easy as possible, it is advantageous for you as a client, to make sure the order is accurately placed to prevent any errors or hassles.
The first step is to select a duplication business. Many businesses promote on the web and because of the intense competition in this industry there are some very affordable deals offered.
Bear in mind that the most affordable doesn’t automatically mean the lowest cost. A good idea is to ask for a print sample to see how good both the services of your selected duplication business and look the quality of the prints and more importantly the content of the disc.
Next is to supply artwork on a CD duplication template provided by the duplication company (most duplication companies have themes and templates that are downloadable in their website). Any type of fonts need to be provided or preferably changed into outlines. An experienced CD duplication business will have a design team that can help with this.
It is also very important to provide the master CD in a format that can be used. Remember that a duplication company will usually copy what you send without looking at the master CD. It is usually thought that this method has been finished before the master CD sent in.
For instance if you are copying an audio CD, do not send it in a data CD of MP3 or WAV files. It is most likely that these will be copied without looking at the files. The basic rule is that you get back what you give in for duplication.
Other typical errors are WMV files or Quicktime instead of video DVD discs. If you need any help in building a master CD then a right duplication business will have a disc authoring division to help.
Make sure that you also make the business knows your deadlines or time conditions. If the discs needed for a particular time on a given day (say for an event) make sure that the individuals that you ask to do the job knows this. It is a very good thought to generate an order via email stating the number of copies needed, features like kind of printing, price and turnaround time. This composed order will prevent any communication problems and serves as a supporting document of your needs if things go wrong.
In conclusion, it is a fair basic process of outsourcing your DVD or CD duplication needs, yet as with most things it pays to be arranged and small plans will go a long way. Do not forget that these CD duplication businesses are copying thousands of discs a day so they don’t guarantee that problems will not happen during the process, but they make sure that they can still manage the process in a fast and accurate manner.